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Improving Your Safety
With a Behavioral Approach
(Reprinted from Hydrocarbon Processing)

Steps in creating a behavioral safety process

Terry E. McSween

Steps in creating a behavioral safety process. (Table 1)

Step

Activity

1

 Create the safety observation process

2

 Conduct training and kick-off meetings in each area

3

 Enhance feedback and involvement procedures

4

 Establish safety incentives

The key element of the behavioral safety process is an observation procedure using a checklist to collect data on employee compliance with safety practices. The steps in the implementation of the observation process are outlined in the following table:

Table 2. Typical steps in creating the observation process.

Task

Activity

1

Pinpoint safe practices

2

Draft and revise checklist

3

Develop observation procedure

4

Trial run the observation checklist and process

5

Conduct Steering Committee review

The checklist can have a variety of formats. The goal is to develop a checklist format that is reliable and easy to use. Ideally the observation process should not require longer than thirty minutes to complete. On the following page is an example of a checklist in which an area is scored as either safe or unsafe on each item. Other formats may involve a frequency count of safe or unsafe employees, a rating scale, or some combination of these.

Interested readers should see Sulzer-Azaroff, Loafman, Merante, and Hlavacek (1990) for an example of an observation sheet that illustrates the use of a combination of these formats. On the upper half of their observation sheet, they counted the frequency of safe behaviors related to compliance with procedure and the use of safety equipment. On the lower half of the sheet, they scored the condition of various zones of their facility as either safe or unsafe based on the presence or absence of several pinpointed safety hazards. They also included a simple layout so that observers could mark the location of hazards.

Several of the key questions your design team should consider in developing the observation process are:

  • Who will conduct the observations?
  • How often will they be conducted?
  • Should observers provide feedback during observations?

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This article first appeared in Hydrocarbon Processing (August 1993) and is reproduced here with permission.